Business Post: Climbing the Ranks 2 Kickstarter P&L

Thought this might be of interest to people, since many people want to know how Kickstarters work and it's a nice little glimpse into the backend. This is for the second Kickstarter, which earned less than the first; but only by a small amount.

Climbing the Ranks 2 Kickstarter P&L

Revenue

In total, we raised $4,926.39 USD. (approximately, we raised in CAD$). That's approximately USD$2200 or so less than book 1, which was not that surprising. In fact, we expected to do about 50% of book 1, so doing about 70% was a win for us.

Direct Expenses

$990 on interior art and chapter headers

$293.73 on the bookmarks, chibi design, chibi stickers and postcards

$109.65 on the Kickstarter video and mockups

$1,617.82 to print the books

$358.00 on shipping supplies and $737.83 on shipping

$409.61 on Kickstarter fees

That means in total, we spent $4,516.64 USD.

Gross Profit before salary costs: US$409.75.

Other (harder to track) expenses

Working with cover designers, chapter artist, internal cover art, formatting, checking new books as they arrive, getting replacement books, the set-up on Kickstarter and the management and promotion during the Kickstarter and of course, the actual shipping of the product.

All that other backend stuff easily crosses the 40 hour mark probably. So, on a pure $ level, we (at best) broke even.

In comparison

Comparing it to the Climbing the Ranks Book 1 Kickstarter, the biggest difference was the cost of the books. We paid $788.17 in 2023 to print all the books, so that was nearly double. Our book 2 was approximately 20k words longer, so that impacted printing cost a little; but I think just the overall cost of printing went up too in the in-between. Shipping was also about $300 more. We ordered and shipped around the same number of books each time.

Analysis / So What Happened?

Obviously, the additional cost of printing for book 2 being longer was not factored into our backer reward side. We also didn't expect that huge increase in shipping, both because the books were a little heavier but also, just from the overall increase in cost as shipping and print cost increased.

We're going to need to make adjustments in both our shipping and backer pledge amounts for book 3 next year when we do this, though thankfully, book 3 is as long as book 2 so we'll have less variation in that.

Was it worth it? If we looked at this just purely financially, the answer is of course, no. However, there are other aspects that come to mind.

1) More paperback books out in the wild. Which is really unusual for LitRPG and independent authors.

2) Paperbacks and hardcover readers are much more likely to be super fans, so catering to them is extremely important for longevity in a career

3) 40% of our backers come from Kickstarter, and we sold a bunch of sets (books 1 & 2) so these readers are important too. They're new readers, which pay off in the long-term.

4) Ancillary product creation is important too for us, with things like the chibi, some gorgeous bookmarks, the much nicer insides (and artwork!) for book 2. All of that makes a big difference in how things look and can also aid us in terms of marketing in the long-term.

All of these factors make it worthwhile to keep doing the Kickstarters. It's why we have 9 done already, have plans for another 4-5 more in the next couple of years as we go along. Sure, they aren't all massive winners, but the ancillary benefits of doing them is important, at least in my view.

Anyway, feel free to ask questions if you have any!